FireworksInTraffic

Lantern Festival 2011

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February 17th 2011
With typical fury our neighborhood celebrated the Lantern Festival with full gusto. Honestly, you get rather numb to all the fireworks. What I find really scary are the floating lanterns in a dense and dry city of 17 million. These a light, paper, hot air balloons that are powered by a block of flammable wax the size of a cellphone. You light it on fire and then set it loose. The wax burn ... read more

Asia » China » Beijing » Haidian district

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For centuries China stood as a leading civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in the arts and sciences, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the country was beset by civil unrest, major famines, military defeats, and foreign occupation. A... ... read more